Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The Role Of The PUK And KDP On The Eve Of Kurdish Elections

On July 25, 2009 the residents of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will vote on a new regional parliament and president. While there are real challengers this time in the legislature, the election is unlikely to break the hold the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of KRG President Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani have over the region. The two parties have ruled Kurdistan since it gained its autonomy after the 1991 Gulf War. Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, the two once bitter enemies have united to maintain their power.

Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the father of Massoud, was the most prominent leader of the Kurdish independence movement. He formed the Mahabad Republic, a Kurdish state, in 1945, which was later crushed. He fled to Russia afterwards, while his son Massoud went to Iraq. In 1946 Mustafa formed the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and returned to Iraq in 1958, and started fighting against the government with the support of Iran. In the 1960s Jalal Talabani left the KDP, and formed his own Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

In 1979 Mustafa died and Massoud assumed control of the KDP. He launched his own insurgency against the Iraqi government during the Iran-Iraq War. At the time, the Barzanis and the KDP were based out of Iran, and he and Talabani fought on the Iranian side during the war with Iraq. After the Gulf War Kurdistan gained its autonomy with the help of the United States, and Barzani and Talabani assumed leadership of the region.

In 2006 the KDP and PUK signed a unification agreement to bring together the two separate administrations. While many officers have been brought together, some of the most important ones, the Finance Ministry, the peshmerga, and the asayesh security forces, have not. There are many members of the old guard in both parties and their peshmerga who are still bitter over the civil war. The militias are also loyal to their political leaders, and not the Kurdish government or Baghdad. The two sides also have different cultures within their administrations, as well as divergent laws, especially on foreign investment, and have not agreed upon how to split revenues. The two Finance Ministries have also made long-term commitments and investments, which have to be completed before the budgets can be unified. These are all reasons why these institutions remain separate.

What the two parties have agreed upon is to maintain their power over the region. The unification agreement gives specific posts in the KRG only to PUK and KDP members for example. The two parties also have extensive patronage systems. For instance, it’s recently been reported that after a four-year hiring freeze the regional government has hired 2,500 new employees just as campaigning started for the Kurdish parliament. Many believe this is a political move to gain more voters in the election. Top positions throughout Kurdistan are also reserved for party members. University presidents, university councils, deans, heads of departments, and scholarships are all connected to the political parties.

Corruption and nepotism are also common complaints about the PUK and KDP. Business deals usually require a high level party official to be completed. The Barzani and Talabani clans have extensive business deals throughout the region, and the latter are said to be worth $2 billion. Family members are also found throughout the government. Massoud’s son Masrour, who is currently the party’s security chief, is going to be the next KDP leader, while his cousin Nechervan is the KRG Prime Minister.

Despite this development in the electorate, little is likely to change after the July 25 balloting. More seats will likely go to new parties in the Kurdish parliament, but Massoud Barzani is expected to be re-elected KRG president. The administration will still be run by the PUK and KDP. Their grip on education, business, government finances, and security will remain in place as well. The upcoming vote is an important step for the Kurdish region because a real opposition might be forming, but until the PUK and KDP loosen their hold on power, the status quo is likely to be preserved.

SOURCES

Amnesty International, “Hope and Fear, Human rights in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq,” April 2009

Anderson, Liam, “Internationalizing Iraq’s Constitutional Dilemma,” will appear in The Kurdish Policy Imperative, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2009

No comments:

TWITTER

About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News, and I have been interviewed by Rudaw English. I was interviewed on CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com